Yearly Archives: 2009

On this last day of 2009 and third-to-last day of being 29, here’s the recap of the 29 Things. I accomplished 13 of them, scratched 11 of them, and am carrying over the rest.

I’m pretty pleased with what I did get done overall, considering how the year started. But while 2009 had some really rough spots and I can’t wait to put my 20’s behind me, the year was good to me. I have a job I like even better, friends and family who help me out, hobbies, and Toby. As Joseph Addison says, “Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.”

So here’s the report–green is done, red is scratched or not done, black is going on the 30 Things list, and any commentary is in italics:

Learn the names of the Wasatch mountain peaks–I only can point to Mt. Olympus––I can point to Twin Peaks, Lone Peak, and Dromedary Peak now, too.

Pay off the remaining debt—Seriously, I thought this day would never come.

Get a queen size mattress

Make a queen-sized quilt—Done! Another day I thought would never come.

Hike Bald Mountain in the Uintas again—This sounded less and less appealing as the year went on and I more fully embraced my fear of heights. So scratch this one.

Finish reading The Silmarillion—I have also fully embraced my inability to retain anything in this book. Scratch!

Knit Christmas stockings (starting with Toby’s, of course)—Only Toby’s is done but that’s the only one that really counts. It’s not like I’m going to hang and fill one for myself.

Visit the north end of Zion National Park

Be less wimpy about riding my bike on cooler days––I was still wimpy, but I’ve come up with a better plan for next year.

Eat at Red Iguana

Eat at The Paris

Chill a watermelon in a stream on a picnic in the mountains—I will now admit that I don’t like watermelon. And I will not be hiking Bald Mountain to give the melon time to chill. Scratch!

Knit at least one thing for charity using up yarn I have-–I bought yarn to knit a hat, which ended up being a practice hat for a gift, and then gave away the first hat to Big Brothers Big Sisters and never took a picture of the gift hat.

Get a new desk chair, if an affordable molded Eames chair exists--I am going to force myself to spend the money for a new chair in 2010. I’ll just pretend it’s a pair of shoes.

Cook moules marnieres and frites—I originally meant “from scratch,” i.e. get the mussels, scrub them, purge them, parboil the taters, fun with deep-frying, etc. I cooked a lot of frozen mussels instead. And The Paris offers both the moules and the frites, so I am going to pass on this.

Stop biting my nails.–I have good days and bad days. Still working on this.

Learn how to apply eye makeup that doesn’t look scary or amateurish–I’ve even gone from powder eyeliner to a real pencil in the last month or two.

Go to the Oyster Bar one Monday a month after work for a half-priced appetizer–-I modified this one in my halfway report, so I’m just calling it done.

Replace my Rubbermaid kitchen garbage can with a broken spring top with something nicer.–I really had a hard time justifying this purchase (but not the purchase of many shoes), so I am indeed turning 30 with duct tape on my garbage can. This one gets top priority in 2010.

Knit an elaborate cabled sweater–I have the yarn and the pattern picked out! Tune in Tuesday for more.

Build my collection of Bach CDs—The only CD I bought this year was Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. Again, no problem buying shoes, but CDs seemed so extravagant.

Learn how to dance—This plan started out so well, but it ended up not working. Live and learn.

Stop getting plastic bags from the grocery store

Have tea at The Grand America—It turned out that they are a client at my new job, so I have had plenty of Grand America experiences without any tea.

Make cloth napkins and use them for everyday meals

Go out to breakfast one weekend a month

Go to Moab for New Year’s Eve—I’m having a party on New Year’s Day instead. No travel in the snow, no leaving Toby alone, no getting drunk the night before: Perfect. I still want to try to get to Moab in 2010, though.

The weekend was so gloomy that I was starting to feel sad, so I had to go find some T.S. Eliot. This is from “Little Gidding,” from the Four Quartets.

Midwinter spring is its own seasonSempiternal though sodden towards sundown,Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,In windless cold that is the heart’s heat,Reflecting in a watery mirrorA glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fireIn the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezingThe soul’s sap quivers. There is no earth smellOr smell of living thing. This is the spring timeBut not in time’s covenant. Now the hedgerowIs blanched for an hour with transitory blossomOf snow, a bloom more suddenThan that of summer, neither budding nor fading,Not in the scheme of generation.Where is the summer, the unimaginableZero summer?

Other than a scarf, I haven’t had a project this week and I can’t decide what I want to make. Going back through the year of Tuesday Project Roundups, I realize I probably don’t need to make anything; 2009’s projects with the new sewing machine and lots of unemployed knitting time included:7 dresses7 shirts5 sweaters4 drawstring shoe/lingerie bags 3 knitted “padded” hangers3 skirts3 pairs of mittens/gloves1 quilt1 pair pajamas1 robe1 Christmas stocking

…or, a project about every two weeks. (Knitting takes a lot longer than sewing, so it screw up the average, but that’s pretty accurate.) No wonder I’m so antsy this week!

I have a split of champagne in the fridge to go with my dinner tonight,* Toby has a feather toy and a laser pointer waiting in his stocking for tomorrow, and I’m going to spend the day baking Frenchthings. Sounds like a good day!

*The wine store was packed yesterday, of course, and I heard someone at the end of the line say, “I guess nobody wants to be sober on Christmas!”

Because this is a pantheistic blog, here’s a poem to balance Monday’s atheist cartoon. It’s by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Mr. City Lights, and was published in 1959 in A Coney Island of the Mind.

Christ Climbed Down

Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where there were no rootless Christmas trees hung with candycanes and breakable stars

Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where there were no gilded Christmas trees and no tinsel Christmas trees and no tinfoil Christmas trees and no pink plastic Christmas trees and no gold Christmas trees and no black Christmas trees and no powderblue Christmas trees hung with electric candles and encircled by tin electric trains and clever cornball relatives

Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where no intrepid Bible salesmen covered the territory in two-tone cadillacs and where no Sears Roebuck crèches complete with plastic babe in manger arrived by parcel post the babe by special delivery and where no televised Wise Men praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey

Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where no fat handshaking stranger in a red flannel suit and a fake white beard went around passing himself off as some sort of North Pole saint crossing the desert to Bethlehem Pennsylvania in a Volkswagen sled drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer with German names and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts from Saks Fifth Avenue for everybody’s imagined Christ child

Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where no Bing Crosby carolers groaned of a tight Christmas and where no Radio City angels iceskated wingless thru a winter wonderland into a jinglebell heaven daily at 8:30 with Midnight Mass matinees

Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and softly stole away into some anonymous Mary’s womb again where in the darkest night of everybody’s anonymous soul He awaits again an unimaginable and impossibly Immaculate Reconception the very craziest of Second Comings

Today is the winter solstice, marking the official beginning of winter. But since it also marks the shortest day of the year, I like to think of it as the turning point: It can only get lighter and warmer from here.

Let’s celebrate with a light-hearted comic about science (click for big).

1. Now that the first decade of the 21st century is almost over, I’m finally getting with it: I have a Flickr account now. None of my own photos are in it; it’s more like a virtual inspiration binder for decorating and projects. (It started because I needed to see two different pillow fabrics next to each other.)

2. I’ve been idly going through real estate sites, just to see what I’m up against (a lot), and the “remarks” on each house on the Chapman Richard site are hilarious:Careful, Cat May Attack If You Try To TouchDO NOT LOCK THE DOOR ON THE INSIDE OF SUN ROOM.Great Fixer-Upper, House Is Uninhabitable

3. And finally, with the solstice approaching, here’s a column from The Guardian by poet Jeanette Winterson about embracing the dark and using it for reflection, being “dark without being melancholy, brooding without being depressed.”